School shootings are more likely to be blamed on violent video games when the perpetrators are white than when they are African American, suggests a study in Psychology of Popular Media Culture. Researchers analyzed 204,796 news articles about 204 mass shootings in the United States over 40 years and found that video games were 8.35 times more likely to be cited as a possible inciting factor when the shooter was white than when the shooter was African American. In another experiment with 169 college students (88% white), researchers found that participants who read a mock newspaper article about a school shooting with a photo of a white shooter were more likely to blame video games than those who saw the same article with a photo of an African American shooter.
DOI: 10.1037/ppm0000255